Liam Barr

Family time rarely announces itself.
It looks like plates left on the table and one more story before anyone moves.

We enjoy it with one eye on what comes next.
The drive home. Tomorrow. The week ahead.

So the evening feels like a pause.
A lovely gap before important life resumes.

But nothing has paused.

The voices around the table are the evening itself.

We spend years asking for more of this.
Then it arrives without a headline and stays until somebody stands.

The important part is already here.
It is sitting with us at the table.

We ask the universe to open a door.
Then lean our whole weight against it.

We try the handle.
Push a little harder.
Read the stillness as a lock.

We come back to it each morning.
Shoulder to the wood. Nothing gives.

A closed door makes waiting feel personal.
As though more effort should change its mind.

A door that opened now would drop us straight on the floor.

Maybe it's time to stop trying to force our way in.
And just wait for the door to open.

Old photographs still look like us.
The eyes and the grin are familiar.
Our names are on the back.

Nothing in the picture became false.
It stopped being current while we kept moving.

We know that about photographs.
We don't ask one how we should look today.

We treat memory differently.
We keep the old version close
and let it decide what we're like now.

Letting that person go can feel ungrateful.
They were real. Their choices brought us here.
The picture holds all of that.

It doesn't need us to keep posing.

A dozen versions have already gone this way.
Nobody marked the day.

The picture keeps who we were.
So we don't have to.